The newest manager in Major League Baseball is also not baseball’s newest manager, in that the Mariners have officially hired Lloyd McClendon to replace Eric Wedge, and McClendon has managed before, for about five years with the Pirates at the start of the millennium. The Mariners are still a young team, and on the face of it, it’s hardly surprising that they went with an experienced leader, since theirs is a team in need of leadership and since we’re all used to coaches getting recycled. But then, McClendon was the only one of the Mariners’ known candidates with prior experience managing in the bigs. Clearly, they didn’t make a track record mandatory. And by hiring the experienced guy, the Mariners actually bucked what seems to be a growing league-wide trend.

The Tigers just hired Brad Ausmus as manager, and he’s hardly ever been a manager, never having managed in the majors. In hiring Ausmus, the Tigers didn’t hire McClendon, who was an in-house candidate. The Nationals just hired Matt Williams to manage, and he’s only been a coach. The Reds promoted Bryan Price to replace Dusty Baker. Going into the recent past, the Rockies settled on the inexperienced but familiar Walt Weiss, the White Sox settled on the inexperienced but familiar Robin Ventura, and the Cardinals settled on the inexperienced but familiar Mike Matheny. In all of our heads, major-league teams value a managerial track record. The times, however, appear to be changing. Perhaps they’ve changed already.

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You guys keep asking questions about FIELDf/x. You guys really want to get some information out of FIELDf/x. The unfortunate reality is that, right now, FIELDf/x is more of a concept than a tool, and on top of that, even if it were turned into something flawless, the data probably wouldn’t be made public. But you want some novel ideas or new presentations, like we all got out of our glimpse of HITf/x. And as much as it’s just commonplace now, don’t forget that PITCHf/x is amazing. So many fascinating projects, the instant PITCHf/x went public. It changed the way we all analyze. It changed the way we look at the game.

One of the first things that really blew my mind, personally, was being able to visualize the actual strike zone, as it’s called, and not as it’s supposed to be. We all had our ideas, but PITCHf/x allowed us to know, for fact. We could see which parts of the rulebook zone don’t get calls. We could see which parts outside of the rulebook zone do get calls. We could see that righties and lefties get different strike zones, and I couldn’t believe it when I saw the typical called strike zone for left-handed batters. There were a ton of called strikes leaking off the outer edge, some several inches from the plate. This has been established over and over again as a thing that happens, and those pitches are commonly referred to as lefty strikes. At this point many of us just take them for granted.

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There’s an interesting comparison to be made between Jacoby Ellsbury and Michael Bourn, which is why I’m beginning this post with a couple paragraphs about Bourn before moving on to the meat. Bourn, you’ll remember, was a free agent just last offseason, and while he didn’t bring star power to the table, it would’ve looked like he did just by WAR alone. The big draw was supposed to be Bourn’s legs. Agent Scott Boras called him “by far the best defensive center fielder in the game.” He could run on the grass, he could run on the dirt, and he was a leadoff hitter who hardly embarrassed himself with the stick. Bourn was to be a fine hitter who really excelled in other areas.

There’s one thing, though, that did and still does get me fascinated. Bourn’s a little guy, and he doesn’t hit for pop. His spray charts convey as much, occasional dinger be damned. You don’t sign Michael Bourn in order for him to drive multiple runners to the plate at a time. But I played around on the ESPN Home Run Tracker, and according to the site, in April 2009, Bourn hit a home run 457 feet. Or, 456 feet, under standard conditions. He’s never come close to reaching that distance otherwise, which is a big reason why that discovery came as such a shock, but the way I took it was that that established a ceiling. Somewhere in there is a hitter capable of hitting a baseball 450 feet, because Bourn had done it before in a game, once. Maybe that’s a stretch, but then it’s a tough homer to fake.

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To be presented shortly: some statements, each of them more or less inarguable.

The Tampa Bay Rays are one of the best teams in baseball. This past season, they lost in the ALDS to the Red Sox. They’ve won at least 90 games four years in a row, they’ve won at least 84 games six years in a row, and in 2008 they advanced to the World Series. In terms of sustaining success, the Rays are a model organization.

The Rays are considered likely to part with ace David Price this offseason, not because he’s a free agent, but because he’ll be under expensive team control. In short, Price is going to cost more than the Rays would like to pay any one player, so the probability is that they’ll exchange their ace for youth, as they did with James Shields.

This coming season, the Rays, by choice, will pay several millions of dollars to outfielder David DeJesus. It appears the same could be said for 2015 as well. One of the more financially strapped organizations in the league is opening the wallet for a guy they picked up in exchange for a PTBNL in late August.

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Somewhere during the playoffs, Dave was hosting and running a live game chat, and some hitter in some game took a hack at what appeared to be ball four. That prompted a reader to comment that he wished somewhere kept track of those, FanGraphs specifically, and while it isn’t always easy to fire off an email when you’re actively in charge of a live chat, Dave took a minute to pass the comment on to me as a suggestion. He said that it could be an offseason post, knowing that it’s the kind of thing that’s right up my alley, and would you look at that, it’s the offseason now. I know it’s the offseason because Twitter is already full of free-agency rumors. Baseball can’t stop, nor will it stop.

We’ve all seen hitters on our favorite teams chase fourth balls, and we’ve all sighed and rolled our eyes. We have a good idea of who’s over-aggressive and who isn’t, but swinging at that last ball is worse than swinging at an earlier one, because swinging at ball four denies a hitter a sure base. Every so often, it’ll work out, with the hitter singling or doubling or tripling or dingering. It doesn’t work out nearly often enough. No hitter on the planet is good enough to justify going after pitches out of the zone in three-ball counts.

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On Oct. 1, 2011, Koji Uehara made his playoff debut and pitched in relief for the Rangers. He faced three batters, retiring none and allowing a dinger. In his next appearance in the playoffs, after ten days, he allowed a dinger. In his next appearance in the playoffs, he allowed a dinger. Uehara wouldn’t pitch again in that postseason, having completely lost Ron Washington’s trust. That is, if he ever had it. It felt like Uehara and the Rangers was never a marriage; rather, they were assigned lab partners, thinking wistfully of other lab partners. They didn’t work well together, and that’s half the reason the Rangers regret giving up Tommy Hunter and Chris Davis.

These days it’s impossible to imagine that version of Uehara ever existed. A vulnerable version, even if the extent of his vulnerability was a wee bit exaggerated. Uehara has always been good, but you might not even realize just how amazing he was with the Red Sox. He allowed a .400 OPS. His OPS allowed was almost half that down the stretch. FOX liked to show a graphic saying that Uehara had walked one batter since the All-Star break. That held true all the way through the playoffs, in which Uehara pitched 13 times, facing 46 batters, walking none, whiffing 16. In the playoffs he allowed a .413 OPS. That’s actually worse than what he allowed in the season.

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It is perhaps no longer appropriate to talk about the 2013 St. Louis Cardinals as a current baseball team. As of late Wednesday night, there are no current baseball teams, with all teams now to be referred to in the past tense. In the end, the Cardinals came up just short of the Red Sox, and though they lost the finale by five runs, they did manage to strand runner after runner against John Lackey and bits of the Boston bullpen. It was a theme for the Cardinals in the World Series — though they didn’t perform much worse than Boston at the plate, their timing was worse, and as Dave noted earlier Thursday, the Cardinals were let down by a lack of timeliness that had driven them all regular season long.

Oddly and interestingly, some semblance of Cardinals magic was with them in October. In the playoffs, with runners in scoring position, the Cardinals batted just .259 with a .701 OPS. Those numbers aren’t particularly good, but in the playoffs, with the bases empty, those same Cardinals batted a woeful .190 with a .522 OPS. On the one hand, the Cardinals weren’t automatic in run-scoring situations, like they were during the year. On the other, they still significantly elevated their performance, and this gets to a subject most perplexing.

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In the little picture, Wednesday’s was a perfectly sensible conclusion. The better baseball team clinched the World Series, on its own home field. One of the truths about the MLB playoffs is that the format doesn’t always reward the best team in baseball. This time, though, the Red Sox have a hell of an argument, and they’re a more than deserving champion. In the big picture, also, Wednesday’s was a perfectly sensible conclusion. The Red Sox won their third title in a decade. They’re always thought of as a powerhouse. The magic is in the medium picture. The picture in which you realize the Red Sox did go from worst to first. Just one season ago, the Red Sox lost 93 games. This season, the Mariners lost 91 games. The Mets lost 88 games. The Padres lost 86 games. There was a lot of talent already in place, but the Red Sox badly needed some work, and the franchise identity shouldn’t blind people to the near improbability of the turnaround. No World Series champion has ever had a worse previous season.

For Sox fans, this was another opportunity to celebrate, and an opportunity to celebrate a Series win at home for the first time in almost a century. For Sox fans and all other fans too, this made for a relatively stress-free game by the middle innings. The top of the seventh offered a glimpse of possible stress, but there was no real stress to be felt after the Sox went up 3-0 in the third and double that in the fourth. Stephen Drew’s homer put Boston’s win expectancy over 90% and it never sank back down below. For several innings, the Sox all but had the clincher in the bag, after chasing the un-chase-able Michael Wacha.

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For a hot minute, used to be the story of the World Series was wacky finishes. More generally, it was overall wackiness, taking into account some defensive blunders. But then we were treated to a more or less clean and conventional Game 5, and now the clear story is David Ortiz, and how he’s presently un-get-outtable. I mean, I guess the real story is how the Red Sox are on the verge of another championship, but as far as players are concerned, Ortiz is the guy. He’s the main guy on the Red Sox, and he’s thought to be the main focus of the Cardinals.

In case you haven’t heard, so far Ortiz has had one of the most productive World Series of all time. He’s got 11 hits in 15 at-bats, and that doesn’t include a grand slam he had taken away by Carlos Beltran, which left him with a meager sacrifice fly. Always a presence, right now Ortiz feels like either a dream or a nightmare, depending on your loyalty. The sense is that he’s seeing the ball better than ever, and hitting the ball better than ever, and as a consequence, if you look around the Internet you’ll recognize the familiar debate about the nature and very existence of hot streaks. They say David Ortiz is locked in. It’s an easy thing to believe. It’s a more difficult thing to prove.

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